Analysis: JoePa's record is untouchable

Joe Paterno has won a record 394 major college football games heading into this season, his 45th as Penn State's head coach.

With Bobby Bowden retired, Paterno's record is in no danger of being passed any time soon. In fact, a case could be made that it's a record that will never be broken. In these days of multimillion dollar contracts and 24/7 responsibilities, why would a guy want to coach until he's 80?

How safe is the record• Here are six of the best coaches and why they don't have a shot.

Mack Brown, Texas. The 59-year-old has 208 major college wins and no coach has more job security. Unless something strange happens, he'll leave when he wants to leave - and when he does it won't be for another job. But he'd need 10 wins per season for the next 20 to have a shot to pass Paterno.

Bob Stoops, Oklahoma. Turns 50 a few days after this season starts. He has 117 victories in 11 seasons with the Sooners (almost 11 per season). At that rate he'd still be short after 25 more seasons. It also wouldn't be surprising to see Stoops give the NFL a shot one day.

Urban Meyer, Florida. In nine seasons with three schools, the 46-year-old Meyer has won 96 games with an .842 winning percentage. But considering he resigned for about 24 hours in December because of health issues, it's unfathomable to think he'd go 30 more years.

Jim Tressel, Ohio State. A year younger than Brown, he's got almost as much job security and 229 victories. But only the 94 he has won at Ohio State count as major college wins. The rest came when he was ripping up I-AA with Youngstown State. So even if Tressel was inclined to stick around for another 20 years or so he couldn't track down JoePa.

Frank Beamer, Virginia Tech. Similar situation to Tressel. He also has 229 victories, but only 187 came in I-A. And he's 63 years old.

Nick Saban, Alabama. Turns 59 this season and has 124 victories. To get to 410 before the age of 80, he'd have to average 14.3 wins per season over the next 20. And you know there's at least a few Alabama fans who will read that and say, "I think he's got a shot."

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our
Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent
via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.